As an artist invited to the convention Art to Play 2012 in Nantes, France, I had to participate in the challenge named "Ma Bulle" ( My Bubble) where one had to produce a A4-sized drawing in which a blank space had been left for a potential face or character.

This one was inspired by the tale Princess and the Pea, with a little twist. I got the idea after Vanessa, who is posing here, who has a very fragile back, but who is able to fall asleep on whatever harsh surface she finds in the meantime.

Back from my first time in Japan Expo Paris, I must admit it's been a frantic adventure, although I can't say that I found time to actually explore the convention hall. We decide to share a stand with Zélie. Those stands are rather expensive, so it was good to split the price in two, but it was mostly the occasion to built a little universe of our own. I was exhibiting a few original paintings and selling prints of my work, while she was showcasing her handmade jewelry and goodies. We are not specialized in the japanese culture at all, but we had seen at Polymanga that our works could fit in. Zélie had made a series of cute kawaii dolls that made a nice link between our creative universe and the theme of the convention. To speak about the logistics, it's been rather crazy. We came all the way from Bordeaux by car, which is a 7 hours drive, carrying an immense, heavy case on the roof that I had build for the occasion. The case was meant to host my precious canvases. The day of the departure, we found out that it had rained a lot that night, and that my ( thankfully empty !) box readied on the roof rack had a one inch-deep water reserve in it... I had to sink it and rush to the nearest DIY store to buy whatever necessary to make it rainproof. We took off with a 6 hour delay. By the way, it rained all drive long on our way to Paris. Ouch.. Those four days at the convention went by at the speed of sound. We had wonderful moments, met a lot of people and several friends there. Sells went rather well, we managed to reimburse the price of the stand and, roughly, our travel expenses. No benefit at all, but load of fun! After several nights with so little sleep, and the rush of packing everything up, we left for Bordeaux on sunday evening. We had barely reach the southern suburbs of Paris that we fell asleep on a highway parking, inside the car in very uncomfortable position, and woke up only next morning. Exhausted, but happy ! Not sure we would do it again, but we will surely give the Japan Expo Belgium a try next November !

I was working late on my computer; she sat by my side, and as the hours went by, she fell asleep on my knees. Photoshop was open, my tablet wasn't far neither, hence the sketch. It's not that often that I use a tablet to draw. Still that old, minuscule Graphire 2 from Wacom.

It is a piece of work that I wanted to show here, for I have been working on it for the last two months and the result is worthwhile. It was aimed at a museum in Porto ( Portugal ), for a historical movie called "The Douro region: 2000 years of history". I proposed the idea of using old images ( paintings, ancient photographs) and allow the spectator to enter them in 3D. For this purpose I have put on my programmer's costume and coded franticly, to create an application that would allow me to reach my goal. It also involved a heavy Photoshop work, in order to decompose each picture into various dimensional plans, which required to invent what was behind the foreground objects. ( I must thank my employee Julia for her help on that huge task).The movie below show the process on one out of 18 images that have been animated this way. You will see the initial picture, a glimpse of the homemade software, and the end result. When watching the Douro movie in HD on a large screen, you get swallowed. It is both disturbing and amazing. I'm rather proud of that project. It also gave me some ideas for my paintings !

It's an ancient project, that first hit my mind around 2005. The concept matured through a number of sketches and studies. My friend Jo came to the studio in Bordeaux in mid 2010 in order to model.I gave my first brush stroke on the blank canvas on january 1st, 2011, at 00:00. I finished the painting and signed it on december 31st, around 9 PM. One year in the making, and finally there, standing on the easel, "No Doll"